The New and Improved Labyrinth
by Zeta graecisswhore
Summary: Novel authored by A.C.H. Smith, novel text transcribed by Stephanie Massick.And taken over and made to fit the Harry Potter universe By Amber Lea.This is made for anyone fans of both the Labyrinth world and the Harry Potter world. I do not own anything is
1. Chapter 1

**The New and Improved Labyrinth**

(Novel authored by A.C.H. Smith, novel text transcribed by Stephanie Massick.)

And taken over and made to fit the Harry Potter universe By Amber Lea.

This is made for anyone fans of both the Labyrinth world and the Harry Potter world. I do not own anything is either worlds. I am just hear to blend the two together. Those who have seen the (Labyrinth) movie will recognize almost every scene. As always Please review.

_Chapter One_

**The White Owl**

Nobody saw the owl, white in the moonlight, black against the stars, nobody heard her as she glided over on silent wings of velvet. The owl on the other hand saw and heard everything. She settled in a tree, her claws hooked on a branch, and she stared at the boy in thepark below. The wind moaned, rocking the branch, scudding low clouds across the evening sky. It lifted the hair of the boy to reveal that of a lighting bolt shaped scare. The owl was watching him, with her round, amber eyes.

The boy moved slowly from the trees toward the middle of the garden, where a pool glimmered. He was concentrating. Each deliberate step took him nearer to his purpose. His hands were open, and held slightly in front of him holding an odd shaped stick. The wind sighed again in the trees. It blew his cloak tightly against his slender figure, and rustled his hair around his wide-eyed face. His lips were parted.

"Give me the girl," Harry said, in a voice that was low, but firm with the courage his quest needed. He halted, his hands still held out.

"Give me the girl," he repeated. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Hogsmeade village, to take back the girl you have stolen." He bit his lip and continued, "For my will is as strong as yours ... and my kingdom as great ..."

He closed his eyes tightly. Thunder rumbled. The owl blinked, once.

"My will is as strong as yours." Harry spoke with even more intensity now. "And my kingdom as great ..." He frowned, and his shoulders dropped.

"Oh, damn," He muttered.

Reaching under his cloak, he brought out a book. Its title was 'The Labyrinth Of Spell One Should Always Know'. Holding the book up before him, he read aloud from it. In the fading light, it was not easy to make out the words. "You have no power over me ..."

He got no further. Another clap of thunder, nearer this time, made him jump. It also alarmed a big, black dog, who had not minded sitting by the pool and being admonished by Harry, but who now decided that it was time to go home, and said so with several sharp barks.

Harry held his cloak around him. It did not give him much warmth, being no more than an old school robe, cut down, and fastened at the neck by a glass brooch made by his dear friends mother Molly Weasley. He ignored Padfoot, the shaggy dog, while concentrating on learning the speech in the book. "You have no power over me," He whispered. He closed his eyes again and repeated the phrase several times. A clock above the little pavilion in the park chimed seven times and penetrated Harry's concentration. He stared at Padfoot.

"Oh, no," He said. "I don't believe it. That was seven, wasn't it?"

Padfoot stood up and shook himself, sensing that some more interesting action was due. Harry turned and ran. Padfoot followed. The thunderclouds splattered them both with large drops of rain.

The owl had watched it all. When Harry and Padfoot left the park, she sat still on his branch, in no hurry to follow them. This was her time of day. She knew what she wanted. An owl is born with all her questions answered.

All the way down the street, which was lined on both sides with privet-hedged houses similar to his own, or what one would consider his, Harry was muttering to himself, "It's not fair, it's not fair." The mutter hadturned to a gasp by the time he came within sight of his house.

Padfoot, having bounded along with him on his shaggy paws, was wheezing, too. His lord, who normally moved at a gentle, dreamy pace, had this odd habit of liking to sprint home from the park in the evening. Perhaps that owl had something to do with it. Padfoot was not sure. He didn't like the owl, he knew that.

"It's not fair." Harry was close to sobbing. The world at large was not fair, hardly ever, but in particular his aunt was ruthlessly not fair to him. There she stood now, in the front doorway of the house, all dressed up in that frightful, dark blue evening gown of hers, the fur coat left open to reveal the low cut of the neckline, the awful necklace vulgarly winking above her freckled breast, and -- wouldn't you know? -- she was looking at her watch. Not just looking at it but staring at it, to make good and sure that Harry would feel guilty before he was accused, again.

As Harry came to a halt on the path in the front garden, he could hear a girls voice, Ginny, crying inside the house. She was his best friends little sister actually, but he did not call her that. She was just Ginny, Sobbing Ginny who wasn't aloud to go to Egypt with the rest of her family because she was still underage. Somehow behind either of their understanding the Weasley' had convinced the Dursley's to let Ginny stay with them. Lately he felt fiercely protective of Ginny, wanting to help her with her potion school work. Sometimes he wanted carry her in his arms and take her away from all this, to a better place, a fairer world, an island somewhere, perhaps. At other times -- and this was one -- he hated Ginny, who had twice as many friends as he had. When he hated Ginny, it frightened him, because it led him into thinking about how he could hurt her. There must be something wrong with me, he would reflect, that I can even think of hurting someone I dote upon; or is it that there is something wrong in doting upon someone I hate? He wished he had a friend who would understand the dilemma, and maybe explain it to him, but there was no one. His friends at school would think him uncaring, if he even mentioned the idea of hurting Ginny, and as for Professor Dumbledore, it would frighten him even more than it frightened Harry himself. So he kept the perplexity well hidden. Harry stood before his aunt and deliberately held his head high.

"I'm sorry," he said, in a bored voice, to show that he wasn't sorry at all, and anyway, it was unnecessary to make a thing out of it.

"Well," his aunt told him, "don't stand out there in the rain. Come on." She stood aside, to make room for Harry to pass her in the doorway, and she glanced again at her wristwatch. Harry made a point of never touching his aunt, not even brushing against her clothes. He edged inside close to the door frame. Padfoot started to follow him.

"Not the dog," his aunt said.

"But it's pouring."

His aunt wagged her finger at Padfoot, twice. "In the backyard, you," she commanded. "Go on." Padfoot dropped his head and loped around the side of the house. Harry watched him go and bit his lip. Why, he wondered for the trillionth time, does my aunt always have to put on this performance when they go out in the evening. His aunt closed the front door, looking at her watch once more, she took a deep breath, and started one of her clichéd speeches.

"Harry, you're an hour late ..."

Harry opened his mouth, but his aunt cut him off, with a little, humorless smile.

"Please let me finish, Harry. Your Uncle and I go out very rarely"

"You go out every weekend," Harry interrupted rapidly.

His aunt ignored that. "-- and I ask you to doisbaby-sit only if it won't interfere with your plans."

"How would you know?" Harry had half turned away, so as not to flatter his aunt with his attention, and was busy with putting his spell book on the hall stand, unclipping his brooch, and folding the cloak over his arm. "You don't know what my plans are. You don't even ask me." He glanced at his own face in the mirror of the hall stand, checking that his expression was cool and poised, not over the top. He liked the clothes he was wearing: a cream-colored shirt with full sleeves, blue jeans, and a leather belt. All which actually fit him, after Ginny did some alternating. He turned even further away from his aunt, to check on how his shirt hung from his front. He tucked it in a little at the belt, to make it tighter.

His aunt was watching him coldly. "I am assuming you would tell me if you had a date. I would like it if you had a date. A fifteen-year-old boy should have dates. Dudley after all goes out every Friday night on one."

Well, Harry was thinking, if I did have a date you are the last person I would tell. He smiled grimly to himself. Perhaps I will have a date, he thought, perhaps I will, but you will not like it, not one bit, when you see who's dating me. I doubt you will see her. All you will know about it is hearing the front door shut behind me, and you will sneak to the window, as you always do, and poke your nose between those horrid phony-lace curtains you put up there, and you will see the taillights of a flying motorcycle vanishing into the sky. And after that, you will keep seeing pictures in the Wizard magazines of the two of us together in Paris, and London. And there will be nothing at all you can possibly do about it, for all your firm views on bedtimes and developmental psychology and my duties and rolling up the toothpaste tube from the bottom. Oh, aunt, you are going to be sorry when you read in the Quibbler about the cosmic cash that the Ministry is offering me to help --

Harry's uncle came down the stairs into the hall. By his arms he was holding Ginny up, clad in red-and-white striped pajamas. He patted her arm. "Oh, Harry," he said mildly, "you're here at last. We were worried about you. Worried that you have left this abnormality at our house for good, that is."

"Oh, leave me alone!" Afraid that he might be close to tears, and may cause accidental magic. Harry gave them no chance to reason with him. He ran upstairs. They were always so utterly convinced that they were always obviously in the right, and that it was only a matter of time before he consented to do as they wished. Why did his uncle always take that woman's side?

In the hallway, his aunt had sat down, still in her fur coat. Wearily, she was saying, "I don't know what to do anymore. he treats me like the wicked aunt in a fairy tale, no matter what I say. I have tried, Vernon."

Grabbing Ginny with one arm, Vernon patted his wife on the shoulder. "I'll go and talk to him."

Thunder rumbled again. A squall of raindrops clattered on the windows.

Harry was in his room. It was the only safe place in the world, beside Hogwarts. He made a point of going all around it each day, checking that everything was just where it had been and should be. Although his aunt seldom came in there, except to deliver some ironed clothes or to give Harry a message, she was not to be trusted. It would be typical of her to take it into her head to dust the room, even though Harry made sure that it was kept clean, and then she would be bound to move things around and not put them back where they belonged. It was essential to ward off that disturbing spirit. All the books had to remain in the proper positions, in alphabetical order by author and, within each author's group, in order of acquisition. Other shelves were filled with toys left over from when the room belonged to Dudley, and they were positioned according to affinities known only to Harry. The curtains had to hang exactly so that, when Harry was lying on his bed, they symmetrically framed the second poplar tree in a line that he could see from the window. The wastepaper basket stood so that its base just touched the edge of one particular block on the parquet floor. It would be unsafe if these things were not so. Once let disorder set in, and the room would never be familiar again. People talked about how upsetting it was to be burgled, and Harry knew just how it must feel, as though some uncaring stranger were fooling around with your most precious soul. The woman who came in to clean three times a week knew that she was never to do anything to this room. Harry looked after everything in there himself. He had learned how to fix electric plugs, and tighten screws, and hang pictures, so that his uncle should have no need to come in except to speak to him.

Harry was now standing in the middle of his room. All around the room, other eyes watched. Photographs both wizards and muggles alike aligned his room.

There was a tapping on her door, and his uncle voice came from outside. "Harry? Can I talk to you?"

Still looking at the pictures, he replied, "There's nothing to talkabout."

He waited. He would not come in unless he invited him. He imagined him standing there, frowning, rubbing his forehead, trying to think what he ought to say next, something firm enough to please that of a young wizard.

"You'd better hurry," Harry said, "if you want to make the show."

"Ginny's had supper," his uncle's voice said, "and she's in bed now. If you could just make sure she goes to sleep all right, we'll be back around midnight."

Again, a pause, then the sound of footsteps walking away, with a slowness measured to express a blend of concern and resignation. He had done all that could be expected of him.

Harry turned from the picture of his two best friends and stared accusingly at the closed door. "You really wanted to talk to me, didn't you?" he murmured. "Practically broke down the door." Things had certainly changed in this house.

He put his wand in her pocket and wiped away any loose tears with a tissue. As he went to throw it in the wastepaper basket, something caught his eye. More exactly, something that was not there caught his eye.

His sneak-o-scope was not there.

Rapidly, he rummaged through his shelf of toys and things, foe-glass,books,extendable ears, broomstick servicing kit, and a Golden Snitch (caught at his first game), though he knew it would be fruitless. If the sneak-o-scope were there at all, it would have been in its appointed place. It was gone. The order of the room had been violated. Harry's cheeks were hot. 'Someone's been in my room', he thought. 'I hate her.'

Outside, the taxi was pulling away. Harry heard it and ran to the window.

"I hate you," he screamed.

No one heard him save Padfoot, and he could do no more than he was doing already, which was to bark loudly, in the garage. He knew where he would find the sneak-o-scope. Ginny already had everything, She could need while there,that andso much more than Harry himself had ever had; yet more was given to her, every day, without question. She was like an honorary Dursley. He stormed into the room she was staying in. The sneak-o-scope lay on the carpet, going off slightly, just tossed away. Harry picked it up and clutched it to him. Ginny, full of food, had almost been asleep in her bed. Harry's entrance aroused her.

He glared at the girl. "I hate her. I hate you."

Ginny started to cry. Harry shuddered, and held the sneak-o-scope still more tightly.

"Oh," he wailed. "Oh, someone ... save me. Take me away from this awful place."

Ginny was howling now. Her face was red. Harry was wailing, Padfoot was barking outside. The storm delivered a lightning flash and clap of thunder directly above the house. It rattled the windows in their frames. Teacups danced in the kitchen cupboard.

"Someone save me," Harry begged.

"Listen!" said a death-eater, one eye opened.

All around him, on top of him, beneath him, the nest of death-eaters stirred sleepily. Another eye opened, and another, and another, all crazed eyes, red and staring. Some of the Death-eaters had clothes, and some had pointed ears, some had fingers like sticks; some were dressed in scraps of armor, some had wands, but all of them had weirdly shaped scare on one of their arms, and all of them served one purpose. Higgledy-piggledy in a heap they slept, in their dirty chamber at the castle of the Lord Voldermort. Their eyes went on opening, and their ears pricked up.

"All right, hush now, shush." Harry was trying to calm himself down as much as Ginny. "What do you want? Hmm? Do you want a story? All right." With barely a moment's thought, he picked up onwhat he read in "The Labyrinth". "Once upon a time there was a handsome young man whose aunt always made him stay home and watch others. The other was a spoiledgirl who wanted everything for herself, and the young man was practically a slave. But what no one knew was this: the Lord of thedeath-eaters had thought it would be nice to destroy the young man from within. So he give him certain powers... Certain dark powers."

In the castle, the death-eaters' eyes opened very wide. They were all attention.

The lightning and thunder crashed again, but both Harry and Ginny had become quieter.

"One night," Harry continued, "when his guest had been particularly nasty, the boy called on the death eater to help him. And they said to him, 'Say your right words, and we'll take the girl away to the Hogsmeade, and then you'll be free.' Those were their words to him.

The death-eaters nodded enthusiastically.

Ginny was nearly asleep again, with only a light protest remaining on her breath. Harry, enjoying his own invention, leaned closer to her, over the side of the bed. He was holding his audience in his spell.

The sneak-o-scope was in his hand.

"But the boy knew," he went on, "that the King of the Death Eaters would keep the girl in his castle forever and ever, and he would turn the girl into a death eater. And so he suffered in silence, through many a long month ... until one night, worn out by a day of slaving at housework, and hurt beyond measure by the harsh, ungrateful words of his aunt, he could bear it no longer."

By now, Harry was leaning so close to Ginny that he was whispering into her pink ear. Suddenly she turned over in her bed and stared into his eyes, only a couple of inches away. There was a moment of silence. Then Ginny opened her mouth, and began to howl loudly and insistently.

"Oh!" Harry snorted in disgust, standing up straight again.

The thunder rolled, and Padfoot gave it all he had.

Harry sighed, frowned, shrugged, and decided there was no way around it. .

"Ginny, "be quiet, will you? Please? Or --"

His voice lowered. "-- I'll ... I'll say the words." He looked up quickly at the shadows on the wall and addressed them theatrically.

"No! No! I mustn't. I mustn't. I mustn't say ... 'I wish ... I wish ...'"

"Listen," said the death eater again.

Every glowing eye in the nest, every ear, was open now.

A second death eater spoke. "He's going to say it!"

"Say what?" asked a stupid Death Eater by the name of Goyle.

"Shush!" The first Death Eater known as Wormtail was straining to hear Harry.

"Shut up!" other Death Eaters said.

"You shut up!" said the stupid Goyle.

In the hubbub, the first death eater thought he would go crazy with trying to hear. "Sh! Shhh!" He put his hand over the mouth of the stupid death eater.

The second death eater shrieked, "Quiet!" and thumped those nearest to him.

"Listen," the first death eater admonished the rest. "He is going to say the words."

The rest of them managed to silence themselves. They listened intently to Harry.

He was standing erect. Ginny had reached such a crescendo of screaming, red in the face, that she could scarcely draw breath. Her body was straining against Harry's arms with the effort she was making. The sneak-o- scope had fallen to the floor again. Harry closed his eyes and quivered. "I can bear it no longer," he exclaimed, and held the Ginny within arms reach, like a sacrificial offering. He started to intone:

"Lord Voldermort! Lord Voldermort! Wherever you may be, Come and take this girl here, Far away from me!"

Lightning cracked. Thunder crashed.

The death eaters dropped their heads, crestfallen.

"That's not right," the first death eater said, witheringly.

"Where did he learn that rubbish?" the second scoffed. "It doesn't even start with 'I wish.'"

"Sh!" said a third death eater, seizing his chance to boss the others.

Harry was still holding Ginny beside him. Outraged by that, Ginny was screaming even more loudly than before, which Harry would have not thought possible. He brought her close and cuddled her, which had the effect of restoring her to his standard level of screaming.

Exhausted by now, Harry told him, "Oh, Ginny, stop it. Why should I have to put up with this? You're not my sole responsibility. I ought to be free, to enjoy myself. Stop it! Oh, I wish ... I wish ..." Anything would be preferable to this cauldron of noise, anger, guilt, and weariness in which he found himself. With a tired little sob, he said, "I wish I did know what words to say to get the death eaters to take you away."

"So where's the problem?" the first death eater said with an impatient sight. Pedantically, he spelled it out. "'I wish the death eaters would come and take you away, right now.' Hmm? That's not hard, is it?"

In the nursery, Harry was saying, "I wish ... I wish ..."

The death eaters were all alert again, biting their lips with tension.

"Did he say it?" the stupid death eater asked brightly.

As one, the rest turned on him. "Shut," they said irritably, "up."

Ginny was breathing deeply, with a whimper at the end of her breath. Her eyes were closed. Harry put her back to bed, not too gently, and tucked her in.

He walked quietly to the door and was shutting it behind him when she uttered an eerie shriek and started to scream again. She was hoarse now, and louder in consequence.

Harry froze, with his hand on the handle of the door. "Aah," he moaned helplessly. "I wish the death eaters would come and take you away ..." he paused.

The death eaters were so still, you could have heard a snail blink.

" ... right now," Harry said.

In the death eaters' nest, there was an exhalation of pleasure. "He said it! "

In a trice, all the death eaters had vanished in different directions, save only the stupid death eater. He squatted there, a grin dawning on his face, until he realized that the rest had left him. "Hey," he said, "wait for me," and he tried to run in several directions at once.

Then he, too, vanished.

Lightning flashed and thunder hammered the air. Ginny gave out with a high-pitched screech, and Padfoot barked as if all the burglars in the world were closing in.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Chapter Two_**

_What's Said Is Said_

The storm raged on over Harry's house. The clouds boiled. Rain lashed the leaves on the trees. Thunder was followed by lightning. Lightning was followed by more thunder.

Harry was listening. What he was listening to was an unnatural silence within the room. Ginny had stopped crying, so suddenly it scared him. He looked back inside the room she was occupying. The bedside light was out. "Ginny?" he called. She did not respond.

He flicked the light switch beside the door. Nothing happened. He jiggled it up and down several times to no effect. A board creaked was that in the room or the stairs? "Ginny? Are you all right? Why aren't you crying?"

He stepped nervously into the quiet room. The light from the landing, coming through the doorway, threw unfamiliar shadows onto the walls and across the carpet. In the lull between two thunderclaps, he thought he heard a humming in the air. He could detect no movement at all in the bed.

"Ginny," he whispered in anxiety, and walked toward the bed with his breath drawn. His hands were shaking like aspen leaves. He reached out to pull the sheet back.

He recoiled. The sheet was convulsing. Weird shapes were thrusting and bulging beneath it. He thought he glimpsed things poking out from the edge of the sheet, things that were no part of Ginny. He felt his heart thumping, and he put his hand over his mouth, to stop himself from screaming.

Then the sheet was still again. It sank slowly down over the mattress. Nothing moved.

He could not turn and run away and leave her. He had to know. Whatever the horror of it, he had to know. Impulsively, he reached out his hand and pulled the sheet back.

The bed was empty.

For a moment or an hour, he would never know how long, he stared at the empty bed. He was not even frightened. His mind had been wiped clean. So clean is was as if an Oblivater had come and wiped out all of his memories.

And then he was frightened, by a soft, rapid thumping on the windowpane. His hands clenched so tightly around his wand, his fingernails scored his skin, and left faint marks on them.

A white owl was flapping insistently on the glass. He could see the light from the landing reflected in its great, round, dark eyes, watching him. The whiteness of its plumage was illuminated by a series of lightning flashes that seemed continuous. Behind him, a Death eater briefly raised his head, and ducked down again. Another that could be seen as Luscious Malfoy did likewise. He didn't seem them. His eyes were fixed on the owl's eyes.

Lightning crackled and flashed again, and this time it distracted his attention from the window by shining on the clock that stood on the mantelpiece. He saw that the hands were at thirteen o'clock. He was staring distractedly at the clock when he felt something nudge the back of him legs. He glanced down. The bed was levitating across the carpet its legs turning colors as it moved. If he didn't know any better Harry would of sworn that the Weasley twin's were playing a prank on him. Harry's lips parted, but he made no sound.

Behind him, something snickered. He spun around and saw it duck down again behind the chest of drawers. Shadows were scuttling across the walls. Death eaters were prancing and bobbing behind him. Harry was watching the chest of drawers. Like the bed, it was moving and rattling on its own accord.

He wheeled around, mouth open, hands clenched, and saw the Death eaters cavorting. They ducked away into the shadows, to evade his eyes. He looked for something that would serve as a weapon other then his wand. For he was still underage and not aloud to use magic. In the corner of the room was an old broom. Not a racing on like that of his Firebolt just an old house broom. He took it and advanced upon the nearest Death Eater.

"Go away. Go away," He whimpered, trying to sweep them out, but the handle of the broom twisted in him hands and slithered out of his grasp.

The storm wind rose to a pitch. Lightning made daylight in the room, and scared faces suddenly began to vanish into cupboards, drawers, or down the cracks between floorboards. As the thunder boomed and the wind shook the curtains, a blast of air blew the window open. Between the fluttering curtains the white owl entered.

Harry wrapped his arms around his face, and screamed, and screamed again. He was petrified that the flapping owl would brush across him. He thought he would die if it did.

He felt the wind blowing his hair around, but the flapping had ceased. Between his fingers he peeked out, to see where the bird was perched. Perhaps it had flown out again.

A prolonged crackling of lightning was throwing a giant shadow on the wall facing the window. It was the shadow of a human figure.

Harry spun around. Silhouetted against the stormy sky was a man. A frightful looking guy. He wore a cloak, which swirled in the wind. A hood wrapped the strangers face. Red-snake like eyes glommed out from underneath the hood. Something glinted about his neck.

Harry said, "Uh ...," and cleared his throat. "Who are you?"

"Don't you know?" The man's voice was calm, almost kindly.

Lightning traced the veins of the sky and lit up his face. He was not smiling, as one might smile on greeting a stranger, nor was his expression fierce. His eyes were fixed upon Harry's with an intensity he found compelling. When he took a step toward him, into the light shining from the doorway, he did not retreat. If his eyes had not hypnotized him, the golden chain around his neck might have. Underneath his robe he pulled out his wand. In one of them he held the jeweled knob of a curious cane with a snake shape at the end.

"I ...," Harry answered. "I ..."

The humming that he had thought he heard in the air was now quite distinct, and musical. The stranger smiled at him hesitancy. He wasn't the slight bit handsome. He had not expected that. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper.

"You're ... him, aren't you?" You're the King of the Death eaters."

He bowed. "Voldermort."

He resisted the ridiculous impulse to return a curtsy.

"I have saved you," he said. "I have liberated you from those bonds that distressed you and frightened you. You're free now, Harry."

"Oh, no. I don't want to be free," he answered. "I mean, I do, but -- I want my best friends little sister back. Please." he gave him a tiny smile. "If it's all the same to you."

Voldermort folded his hands on the top of his cane. "What's said is said."

"But I didn't mean it," Harry replied quickly.

"Didn't you, now?"

"Oh, please. Where is she?"

Voldermort chuckled. "You know very well where she is."

"Please bring him, back, please." he heard herself speaking in a small voice. "Please!"

"Harry ..." Voldermort frowned, and shook his head. His expression was all concern for him. "Go back to your room. Read your books. Put on your robes. That is your real life. Forget about the girl."

"No, I can't."

For a moment, they regarded each other, adversaries trying to size each other up at the outset of a long contest. Thunder rumbled.

Then Voldermort raised his left arm, and made a large gesture with his hand. Harry looked around, thinking that he was summoning assistance. When he faced him again, a glowing crystal had appeared in his hand.

"I've brought you a gift, Harry," he said, holding it out to him.

He paused. He could not trust him. "What is it?"

"A crystal, nothing more. Except that if you look into it ... it will show you your dreams. Its much like the Mirrior of Erised "

Harry's lips parted involuntarily. With a teasing smile, Voldermort watched his face, while he spun the shining crystal around in his fingers. His hand started to reach out for it. He smiled a little more, and withdrew the crystal from him.

Raising the cane with his other hand, he told him, "But this is not a gift for an ordinary boy, one who takes care of a crying girl." His voice was quieter now, and huskier. "Do you want it, Harry?" He held it out toward him again.

This time his hands remained by his sides, and he made no answer. His eyes were fixed on the dancing, flashing glints of the crystal. To see his own dreams -- what wouldn't he give for that?

"Then forget the girl," Voldermort said firmly.

While Harry hesitated, another bolt of thunder and lightning illuminated the sky behind the Death Eater Lord.

He was torn. The gift was not only seductive, it was also the choice of someone who understood him, someone who cared about the secret places of his imagination and knew how infinitely much more they meant to him than anything else. In return, he would have to trade his responsibility for an offensively spoiled girl, who made endless demands on him and never showed the least sign of gratitude; who was, after all, only his best mates sister. The crystal was spinning, glowing. He willed his eyes to close. From behind shut eyelids, he heard a voice answering. It was his own voice, but it seemed to be a memory. "I -- I can't. It isn't that I don't appreciate what you're trying to do for me ... but I want my best mates sister back. She must be so scared ..." he opened his eyes again.

Voldermort snorted, and tossed his head back. He had lost patience with the boy. With a wave of his wand, he extinguished the crystal. With another wave, he plucked a live snake from the air. He held it with a straight arm in front of him, so that it writhed and hissed near Harry's face. Then he threw it at him. "Don't defy me," he warned him.

It was wrapped around his neck. He clutched desperately at the thing, and found that it was now a silk scarf. He yelled, dropped it and jumped away. When it hit the floor it shattered into a number of horribly ugly little spiders, who scuttled, snickering, to the corners of the room. Death eaters crept from the shadows, or popped out from their hiding places, and stood, all around the room, brazen now, watching to see what their king would do to him next.

"You are no match for me, Harry." Voldermort sounded impatient. "Let the girl alone. Take my gift. I will not offer it to you again."

Before he could produce the crystal, Harry told him, "No." he paused. "Thank you all the same, but I can't do what you want. Can't you see that? I must have Ginny back."

"You will never find her."

"Ah," Harry said, and took a deep breath. "Then ... there is a place to look."

Just for a moment, Voldermort's face flinched. Harry saw it, the merest trace of fear fleeting across his eyes. Was it possible? His nostrils tightened, he gripped his cane, and appeared to hesitate slightly before answering him. He could not quite believe it, but the suspicion that the Death Eater King could be afraid of him, even if only momentarily, was encouraging.

"Yes," he said. "There is a place."

And now, with a really hammy gesture straight out of vaudeville, he twirled his hand and pointed through the window.

"There!"

Lightning and thunder, right on cue, he thought. He moved past him and stared into the night. On a distant hill, brilliant in the flashes, he saw a castle. He leaned on the windowsill, trying to see more clearly. There were towers with turrets, massive walls, spires and domes, a portcullis and drawbridge. The whole edifice was built on top of a sharply rising mound. Around it the lightning flickered and forked like snakes' tongues. Beyond was blackness.

From just behind him shoulder, Voldermort murmured. "Do you still want to look for him?"

"Yes." he swallowed. "Is that ..." he remembered the words. " ... the castle beyond the Hogsmeade City?"

Voldermort did not answer at once, and he turned around. He was still there, watching him intensely, but they were no longer in the house. They stood facing each other on a windswept hilltop. Between them and the hill on which the castle stood was a broad valley. In the darkness he could not tell what was down there.

He turned again. The wind blew his hair over his face. Brushing it back, he took one timid step forward.

Voldermort's voice came from behind him. "Turn back, Harry. Turn back, before it is too late."

"I can't. Oh, I can't. Don't you understand that?" he shook him head slowly, gazing at the distant castle, and to herself, quietly, repeated, "I can't."

"What a pity." Voldermort's voice was low, and gentle, as though he really meant it.

He was looking at the castle. It seemed to be a long way off, but not impossibly far to travel. It depended on what he would encounter in the valley, how easily it could be crossed. Was the darkness down there perpetual? "It doesn't look that far," he said, and heard in his voice the effort he was making to sound brave.

Voldermort was at his elbow now. He looked at him, with a smile that was icy. "It's farther than you think." Pointing at a tree, he added, "And the time is shorter."

Harry saw that an antique wooden clock had appeared in the tree, as though growing from a branch. On it were marked the hours to thirteen, as on the room clock in the lightning.

"You have thirteen hours to un-riddle the Labyrinth," Voldermort told him, "before your dear Ginny becomes one of us."

"Us?"

Voldermort nodded. "Forever."

Magic still hummed in the air. Harry was standing still, hair tossing in the wind, looking out across the valley toward the castle. After a while, he said, "Tell me where I start."

He waited for an answer, and finally he heard him say, "A pity."

"What?" he turned his head to look up at him, but he was not there. He spun all around. He had vanished. He was alone in the night, on a windswept hilltop.

He looked across again at the castle. The storm was passing away. Blades of clouds sliced across the moon. he thought he glimpsed the figure of an owl, high above, wings spread wide on the air, as she flew steadily away from him.

He took another step forward, down the hillside. But there was no ground beneath his feet. He began to fall.


End file.
